Diana A New Musical
Every year or two, I have the opportunity to be part of musicals that premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, CA. The La Jolla Playhouse and The Old Globe Theater in San Diego are two major theaters where most musicals premiere before heading to Broadway. The Jersey Boys and Come From Away are two recent musicals that are both Tony award winning musicals that had their start at LJP (La Jolla Playhouse). So, for my part, I get to be part of the development and sound of many of them. Diana – A New Musical closed on April 14th after two extensions. It will be on Broadway in 2020. It is a musical about Princess Diana and her storied relationship with Prince Charles and the Queen as well. The music was awesome! It was composed by Bon Jovi keyboardist, David Bryan with music direction and vocal arrangements by Ian Eisendrath and masterfully orchestrated by John Clancy. The orchestra was killing:
Steve Dillard, John Riley, Jane Zwerneman, Gary Seligson, Haley Bennett, Michael Pearse, Charlie Savage, Vince Cooper and Jack Majdecki
Not Pictured: Ian Eisendrath and Rodney Howard
- drummers: Rodney Howard and Gary Seligson (New York)
- bass: Michael Pearse (San Diego)
- guitars: Jack Majdecki (Los Angeles) and Vince Cooper (San Diego)
- keyboards: Charlie Savage (New York)
- keyboards/musical directors: Ian Eisendrath and Haley Bennett (New York)
- trumpet: Steve Dillard (San Diego)
- french horn: Jane Zwerneman (San Diego)
- reeds: John Riley (Lake Forest)
- keyboard programming: Scott Wasserman and Hiro Iida (New York)
Here are some pictures from the 21/2 month run:
Gear Info for Diana
- Nylon and Steel String acoustic guitars – both direct to house sound. Fortunately, the house sound design used many killer pre-amp/reverb settings for everything, I didn’t need to use any enhancement here.
- Electric Guitars – I used a Suhr Strat and a Fender Telecaster. The amp is a Koch Twintone direct out (speaker IR was a Marshall 412). The pedalboard was mostly used for light distortion for the most part. A lot of cleanish tones like police, peter gabriel, peter townsend, … The Timmy and the Xactone Precision Multi-Drive were mostly used with a lot of stacking with the Jan Ray. Delays and reverbs – there were many different settings and tempos used – were all programmed into the Line 6 HX Effects unit so I didn’t spend the show tapping tempos, etc. The pedal board was built by David Phillips at LA Sound Design. He does work for most cats in LA and …
Beautiful scenery around La Jolla
